Food pan refrigerators used in restaurants include a refrigerator with a number of ingredient pans set into the top surface of the refrigerator chest. In sandwich restaurants, these units are commonly known as “sandwich-top refrigerators,” in pizza restaurants they are known as “pizza make stations,” and similar units are used for buffets, salad bars, ice cream sundae bars, seafood, condiments, and so forth. An evaporator inside the food pan refrigerator is intended to cool the food pans evenly without freezing the ingredients in the pans. Conventional evaporators, however, are not well suited to this task because they blow the refrigerated air either straight up or straight out. Blowing the refrigerated air straight up overcools the rearmost pans while under-cooling the forward pans, which can lead to freezing the condiments in the rear pans or allowing the condiments in the forward pans to spoil. Blowing the refrigerated air straight out, on the other hand, may also fail to cool the pans evenly and, in general, is an inefficient way to cool the pans. Accordingly, there is an ongoing need for an improved evaporator and associated food pan refrigerator. In particular, there is a need for an evaporator that cools the food pans set into the top surface of the refrigerator chest evenly and efficiently.